MeckConnect is a multi-faceted approach to citizen engagement that ranges from leveraging social media to fact-to-face meetings at the neighborhood level.  A primary tenet is to reach out to and interact with residents where they congregate naturally (i.e., intact groups) to discuss issues of their interest rather than calling public meetings on topics of interest to government leaders.  MeckConnect transforms the relationship between residents and their government from the vendor/customer model where residents interact with government as the “experts” who design and provide products and/or services. Instead, the objective is for government leaders to formulate relationships with residents on equal terms to identify community needs and solutions, akin to the barn raising model.